Saturday, March 16, 2013

ROSETTA IN THE 1920s

Rosetta and her sister shared a wardrobe in the late 1920s

My sister Edna was an excellent secretary and when she left a
job she always wound up with a better one. Edna and I worked just a couple of
blocks away from each other in the downtown section of Chicago. The work week
was five and a half days and when we were finished on Saturday afternoon, we met
at a cafeteria across the street from Swartchild. We had some lunch and then
went shopping in the department stores.

1920s PAJAMA PARTY - ROSETTA AND HER

CO-WORKERS FROM SWARTCHILD & COMPANY

Rosetta is in the third row in the middle. If some of the women look "stoned" it is

because in those days if anyone's eyes were closed, the photographer painted in the eyes--

not always with a great result!

With meager earnings, we couldn’t afford much of a
wardrobe singularly, so we decided to buy our dresses together. Edna was five
feet tall, and I am five foot-two. Edna was heavier than me, so what she took
up in width I took up in
height.

She tried a dress on first and if it looked good on her, then I tried on
the same dress. If it
looked good on both of us, we split the cost. I earned all of eighteen dollars a
week, and Edna earned more. I don't know how much more, but both of us contributed
half of our pay to the household.

We couldn't go on wild shopping sprees, but little by
little we managed to increase our wardrobe. We checked with each other in the
evenings, figured out which dress each of us wanted to wear to work the next
day, and that way there wasn’t any squabbling in the morning.

When Saturday evening came, we gottogether withour
girlfriends and went dancing. We always went in a group. Since we all lived in
the same area, it was safer
that way. There were dances every weekend inthe better hotels and
the big bands sure played up a storm. We
had lots of good times in those days. I guess we were pretty innocent,
but we lived for those weekend dances. I became a champion Charleston dancer.

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Rosetta the Dancing Queen

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Now available in Kindle and Paperback

ABOUT ROSETTA

Born in 1909, Rosetta was the youngest of ten children in a zany immigrant family. She talks about growing up in the early 1900s when cars were still being developed, very few people had telephones or radios and getting an education beyond grammar school was a privilege for children in families of modest means.

Laughter was Rosetta's companion throughout her long llife--nearly 97 years, and she had the ability to inspire others to achieve beyond what they thought possible.

Her handwritten memoir was turned into "Can We Come In and Laugh, Too?", now available in paperback and digital editions. So grab a comfortable chair and share a bit of laughter with her.